Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Hurley
Shenna is uncomfortably silent as we pack up our overnight bags and check out later that morning. I tell myself she’s processing everything we talked about.
I pray that she’s not giving me the silent treatment because I didn’t hurt her feelings.
“How was the room?” Ella asks when we check out.
“Good,” I say, handing her the room key.
Suddenly, my wife is super animated and chatty. “My goodness, it was wonderful. The honeymoon suite is so romantic! The fireplace, the view, every little detail.”
Ella beams at her. “So glad to hear it. I do hope you two will stay with us again soon.”
Shenna is practically breathless as she clutches her chest. “Oh, we definitely will,” she says. “The bed is so comfortable and sturdy. And that shower? Very accommodating. Wasn’t it, honey?”
I stare at her like she’s lost her mind, and she bats her now-normal lashes at me. “Yep,” I grunt.
Ella claps in delight. “Well, that’s the best review I’ve ever heard. Be sure to post on Yelp!”
Shenna grips my arm as we leave.
“Laying it on a little thick, Blake,” I say.
“I’m sorry. Did you not like my performance?”
I don’t know how to answer that, and the short drive to the General Store is uncomfortably silent. We park in the alley behind the store, empty except for Jack’s truck and a row of stacked stock pallets. My mind is reeling, and my body is buzzing. All that talk about sturdy beds and accommodating showers put some utterly inappropriate thoughts in my head. What have I gotten myself into?
She’s out of the truck before I have time to open her door for her, which makes me crackle with annoyance.
“You have to be more careful,” I say, taking her hand as we approach the employee entrance of the store.
“What?”
“You can’t just jump out of the truck like that. You have to let me help you.”
“I’m not your granny!”
“Shenna, that’s not the point. You are not aware of your surroundings.”
“Why are you so mad?”
I turn to her, and I can’t explain what happens next. Her flashing, angry eyes. Her full, frowning lips, her brow drawn together in annoyance and confusion…and then everything she described to Ella, implying we fucked in every corner of the room. The way my cock presses against the zipper of my trousers. It’s too much. It’s all too much.
Before I have time to reconsider what I’m doing, I’m hauling my wife away from the employee entrance to the store, and into a shadowy area between the brick wall and the rows of pallets. I back her against the brick wall, cup her face, and press my lips against hers.
She gasps in shock, but then grips the front of my shirt as she licks her sweet tongue into my mouth.
Suddenly, she pulls back, that annoyed look still on her face. My cock twitches.
“You make a lot of sense on paper, but in practice?”
“Shenna,” I growl. “Shut up.”
Our mouths crash together, a riot of tongues and lips and teeth. Her nails dig into my chest.
“You’re so full of shit,” she hisses when I break away briefly, cupping her face and stroking her cheek with my thumb.
“I know.”
“You thinking that you’re ruining me for true love is just as fucked up and puritanical as everything that cult stood for in the first place.”
“Yeah?” I unzip her hoodie and snake my hand inside, enjoying the warmth of her skin beneath the hem of her tee shirt.
“Yes. You’re saying I should be a pure, untouched virgin when I fall in love with the right man.”
I smirk and ease my hand higher, my thumb brushing the bottom of her bra. “Well, when you put it that way…”
“And furthermore, you wanna talk about cult shit?”
“Not really.”
“You’re not somehow more evolved than me just because you left as a kid. I’d say there’s plenty you haven’t dealt with yet because you can’t seem to talk about anything that happened to you.”
I’m fully cupping her breast now. Her pretty nostrils flare. “Are you finished?”
She nods.
I press my mouth against her, and her body melts into mine.
Her skin is hot as my mouth blazes a trail down her neck.
Shenna’s thigh rubs against the outside of my leg, driving me deeper into madness.
My hands reach between us, and I work her jeans open. I slide the fingers of one hand down the front, and claim what’s mine.
Her body twitches as she lets out a small moan. “Oh…”
“You’re not wearing panties, Shenna.”
“Astute observation.” She moans louder as I work my fingers between her pussy lips.
“Oh!”
I stifle her sexy moans with a searing kiss.
She shivers as my other hand squeezes her tit, while I kiss up and down her neck.
“Hurley…”
I barely recognize my own voice. “You’re so wet, Shenna.”
“Is that…is that good?”
“Hell yes.”
She pushes back against my hand, demanding more.
Shenna gives a soft moan against my mouth when I find her clit.
“That little pussy is so wet and tight. I knew it would be.”
“You…you knew?” she gasps.
My thumb works over her clit while I sink one finger into her sticky warmth.
I almost come apart when her tiny muscles squeeze around my finger. I continue to toy with her breast, teasing out that nipple into a hard pebble through the fabric of her bra.
Shenna comes hard and fast, her cheeks flushing red, her soft body arcing against me.
Carefully, slowly, I pull out of her, let go of her breast, and work the fly of my jeans open.
She reaches down, trying to help. “Hands up,” I command.
Her jaw is slack as I pin both her wrists above her head and jerk my cock against her lower belly. I kiss her again, deeply, slowly, matching the rhythm of my thrusts.
I finish all over my wife’s pretty little belly, and clean her up with the hem of my flannel. I keep control of her through the full-body shivers, and kiss away her shocked tears.
“I’m not crying because I’m sad,” she rasps.
“I know.”
“I’ve never…my body’s never done that before.”
I kiss her again, and she accepts my tongue greedily.
“Let’s go to work.”
Her misty eyes finally register what I’ve said.
“Oh. Right,” Shenna says. “I guess I go back to work at the general store today, and you go back to your…thing.”
“Nope.”
“Huh?”
“You’re working with me now.”
Shenna looks taken aback and wriggles her wrist free of my grip. “What do you mean? I’m the assistant manager. I have to assist Jack.”
“Jack doesn’t need that much help around the store. You can come with me on wilderness excursions when I have clients.”
I can see she’s trying to remain calm as she zips up her jeans, and I do the same.
“In case you forgot, we’re not a real husband and wife, and I don’t have to do what you tell me to do.”
“I’m not trying to boss you around. It’s about protection, Shenna. And it is real.” He flashes the ring.
“Sure feels like control.”
“But the entire reason for us getting married is so I could protect you.”
She smiles and twists a lock of hair around her finger. The smile is strange and doesn’t meet her eyes. I didn’t know she could smile and look mad at the same time, but it sure feels like that’s what’s happening. “Well, husband, I’m protected by virtue of the fact that I’m married. I’m now unusable to the man betrothed to me as a child.”
I wince. “I don’t like that word.”
“What word?”
“Unusable. Nobody should use you. Nobody should use anybody.”
“But I’m using you to protect me, am I not?”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t see how.”
I lean forward, my body simply needing to stay close to her, even if we disagree. “You knew that marrying me was the best choice. The only choice. Getting married is the only way to ensure that those creeps are going to leave you alone, permanently.”
Shenna mirrors me by leaning forward and tilting her face up as if begging to have those swollen lips kissed again. “I always have choices. And I don’t want to go camping. I don’t like it. I don’t like bugs. I don’t like peeing outdoors. And I don’t like the weird tent smell. It gives me a headache.”
This is not how I thought my morning was going to go. “You do realize I’m so good at wilderness excursions because I was forced to make my own shelter and forage for food until I found my way to Misty Mountain?”
She blinks up at me. “No, I didn’t realize that. You don’t talk about those times.”
“Well, now you know. What else do you want to know?”
“Why do you barely eat anything?”
“I do eat. I just don’t eat meat. I chose veganism because of the food poisoning I got from the squirrels I managed to catch and eat. I was 16 and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, trying to dress and cook wild game.”
“Oh, god,” she says, covering her mouth.
“I can’t stomach the smell of meat. Ever again. But I don’t care if you eat it. There. Now you know everything.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Hurley. Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But I’m still not going camping with you.”